Welcome to the NewsLog or Blog of Heiner Benking. A kaleidoscope of insights and impulses collected first in the Seeds of Change Viewsletter of the Club of Budapest in 1995 and continually updated ever since.
Since some years available for broader distribution and comments - enjoy, and come again !

2 Aug 2015 @ 02:50
yesterday we revisited as announced the "ON THE EDGE" exhibition. See:
[link]we had to do some VIDEO takes with Alexander Christakis in another "AGORA setting" stay tuned... busy days - as Alexco need to leave this beautiful Berlin before the ISSS unfortunately - but priorities in life and in general matter...
Highlight beside Alecos lecture were the films from Maria.... stay tuned....

Maria, who is Maria!? maybe check regarding our topic this event 5 years ago about our themes and Democratic R[E]volution, as it was moderated by Maria Kakoulaki https://sites.google.com/site/21stcenturyagora/home/connecting_dots_and_-spaces
[link] now published with the OAC and COUNCIL of CHURCHES in some environments...

31 Jul 2015 @ 08:59
NOTES FROM THE PALACE: Two days in Herrenhausen in Hannover are very exhausting - but it is the place of Leibniz, see Theoria cum Praxi see "Duty and Insight" a few weeks ago. [link]

Organized by a broad range of organisation and financed the Volkswagen Foundation - I hope I find an online programme somewhere... ****
It is a pre-event for the ISSS next week: Governing the Anthropocene: the greatest challenge for systems thinking in practice?[link]Organized as a systemic inquiry bringing together invited speakers, delegated form reknown international organisations, scholars and writers, and postgrad and doctoral researchers/students.

The quality and contend is outstanding and I need to discuss and build on the presentations of some speakers, only to mention: Andreas Rechkemmer, Umberta Telfner, Alexander Christakis, Raul Espejo, David Lane, .....

Herrenhausen for me in a nutshell? It was as you can see in my slides: "Theoria cum Praxi, Work and Play, walking the talk" I overexposed myself to not cover "more than you have time for" - what I learned the last 40 years, but I also learned to step back, look "from the mountain" & take "viewpoints in and out" (in the Cognitive Panorama) (see slides)... you see there are some dilemmas and contradictions involved here and there - and we have to learn to live with them !! ... But I was asked to put the CoR, SDP, and where we are after 45 years "Methodenstreit" into perspective. Well we summed up, resonated and tried the synthesis this 2 month ago as WUNDERKAMMER re-visited!!: {link:http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v396/__show_article/_a000396-000362.htm|WUNDERKAMMER revisited !:

In "my 15 minutes" I did a little performance, excuse, as I can not expect that everybody has all this "OLD THINK - in times of all theis "NEWTHINK" at hand.
I also propose to check GROUP-THINK and CLAN-THINK by a collegue of Christakis, John Warfield (see slides) and Warfields MENTOMOLOGY - THE IDENTIFICATION AND CLASSIFICATION OF MINDBUGS[link]But what I could do was to bring some books from my library, not the booksharing and bookgifting ***** BücherboXX its bookcrossing sister, to make a little private book exhibition, unfortunately not in a bookboXX (maybe next time !?) The Japanese for example have great telephone boxes....
I brought a bag of books on my shoulder to the panel-performance of my 15 minutes - as we have no "BücherboXX" !! [link] Some participants liked "certain books" and the "time was running" and I am not only carying these books in my "camel and donkex mode along and across towns So I have promised to send the book covers, if not a list later ... Maybe meanwhile you enjoy the pictures of some of the books in Herrenhausen so you can remember titles. (I put this themes, books, issues into my "Cognitive Panorama" mapping/concrete shared modelling Scaffolding, but this you see in my presentation title....
as an aside: Some of you have been with me in the Library of the Hotel (old books, valuable and closed-in - see pictures ! and fake books behind the reception.... I call them "Potemkin's Book facades...

and this translation of an article (work in progress) from 2005 in HAGIA CHORA : To see with other Eyes[link] GERMAN Original)
https://www.academia.edu/1829702/Mit_anderen_Augen_sehen_-_Ein_Welthaus_verbindet_Wirklichkeiten--_HAGIA_CHORA21-_2005

as our theme is ANTROPOCENE and how to get there, maybe also this helps to prepare for the students weekend:
THE ANTHROPOCENE - Earth Episode/Epoche or Shared Negotiated Leverage Spaces !?
[link]

and the WHOLE EARTH:
[link]and:
German Chancellery – Boxes and Models for the Public – 24 years ago and today[link]

20today

SORRY RUSHING....
but I promised to visit next week the ON THE EDGE[link] in the ANIMAL ANATHOMICAL THEATER close to Konrad Hagendorns HUB-LGF WIN office on the campus... (Langhansbau)
Stay tuned.... and maybe check: ARCHITECTURE and MUSIC [link] ... and more to come - or our summer school there in 1999-2000, we call it STUDIUM GENERALE....
bytheway: My contribution Jan 17th 2000 was: THE NEW MEDIA - contributions towards a "Communicative Society"... [link]

7 Jul 2015 @ 12:36
There is a big question mark around the Symposium: SPP 1689 Climate Engineering Research Conference [link] going on until Friday July 7-10 in the German Academy of Sciences BBAW: [link] see also News on the topic: [link]

We will have a week to prepare for next weeks policy sessions and what kind of new research and action should be pushed with highest priority. They are talking here about "negative emissions" when people in the street might better understand "storage" and propose "vapourware" futures. I will CC Jerome and the Millennium Project next to see what is really "in the air" or future research policies, and how safe and reliable the schemes presented here are....

Me I feel we should go onto Natural Carbon Storage, discuss what kind of "carbon" we are talking about, ....
We proposed projects around our UN-ECOSOC efforts [link]long ago. Solutions like Terra Preta/BioChar, another solution is presented here by the ReefFormers ....(PDF) [link]a project I covered earlier: in Kiel OCEAN FUTURES: [link] and Sofia Blue and Smart: [link]

The quality and variety of the symposium participants is great and there is lots of talk about "slippery slopes", free drivers and riders, .... you see, participants taking perspectives, positions, scales, proportions, consequences, ... and are very concerned enough to hide it and transcend....

https://www.facebook.com/multiversity check out the websites and come to the closing party July 11 in Berlin Schöneweide !

Open-Bar and -Energy: at the Open-Island co-creation camp, we play around with materials, ideas, functions and share our different knowledge and skills. TODAY, from 4-6 PM CET, we join the "Living Bridges Maker Meet" global hangout. We hope to see YOU too in the hangout (participation link will be available soon at https://www.facebook.com/groups/livingbridgesplanet/ or here) Livestream also available if you prefer to just watch. The purpose is to discuss the meaning and mindsets of "MAKERS" and see, if they are interested to connect glocally for humanitarian challenges and open-source co-creation.

2 Jul 2015 @ 13:39
The Humboldt Lab Dahlem, checking Laboratory Conceps until tomorrow hosts a symposium dear to my work on bringing difference across cultures together. This Dahlem Lab is located in the Ethnological, African and Asian Museum and a must for visitors not only from abroad. We are in the

THE SYMPOSIUM IS ABOUT ARTISTIC AND CURATORIC STRATEGIESDokumentation.humboldt-lab.de in view of new forms of presentation and how that can be displayed in the Berlin Castle soon. See blog.humboldt-lab.de

It is about the crossing of boundaries between the disciplines, critical interrogations of the categories involved.

I am back on the second day. Interesting talks, very special audience, too little artists, all curators, ... see !? You can see the embodied group-think, how specialst for regions, meet expertise from cultures, arts, ....
Great people struggeling...

The last presentation is about MANGA, Musealizing Manga in Japan: The precedence of"media" over "culture" and "art", very interesting, check out: Jaqueline Berndt, Kyoto Seika University. More >

For me it looks like back to the roots, a déjà-vu of data and processing the last 40 years. As I am working on an essay about Robert Jungk and his search for the NEW LIBRARIANS essay he wrote those days, I can not resist to check out the Free University Berlin KOBV Forum and check out the full programme with the title:
RÜCKBLICK _ AUGENBLICK _ WEITBLICK: - Looking back - Moment - Long and Broad View As you can see terms like BLICK=View, SCHAU: *** [link] , Auge=EYE are very central to understand Geman thinking with all its annotations and embodiments.

Now we have not a poetry slam, but 18 times MINUTE MADNESS (1:30 minutes pitches...) check the programm!
I like the format - only miss that we do not have a chance to follow up with a magic Roundtable - Stammtisch 2.0 and 3.0 ? [link] or see our CAPS event (PDF page4): [link] or the bpb session: https://www.bpb.de/199775/ws-33-magic-roundtable-dialog-auf-gleicher-augenhoehe?nc&reply&cid=842

A very special event about the Challenges around not just CHALLENGES to SCIENCE and POLITICS -see our 25th and 45th celebrations [link] - but how to include stakeholders, not observers and lobbyists. Check BUNDERKUMMER revisited in this blog: also on the following days: [link]

The event is very interesting, I enjoyed talking not only to Gethmann and Labisch and recommend...
will use much for Leibniz Castle Herrenhausen in July, Stay tuned...

I am a little concerned and sadened in view of how little was achieved in 5 years, and in view of what I witnesses when planners and architect were trying to change how towns were build and ho to do regional planning, but developers and consultants where blocking 40 years ago. Central critical directions where not pursued: building structures, sewer-systems, water systems, infrastructures and transportation systems.

How long it took to report in New York and Geneva, and how little...
BUT also where people like Haiko Pieplow, Ralph Otterpohl, Gerhard Soja, Hans Peter Schmidt .... are struggling with today and which milestones are on thorizon or already made....he

This is Heiner Benking's News Log, a private-public diary presenting events, symposia and happenings in Berlin and elsewhere - my farings, foci, issues and concerns.
The Log links in to my work and interests and presents issues and special concern of maybe a very small group of "concerned, engaged generalist" - a Global Interest Group (GIG). This needs to be seen in contrast to the ubiquitous Specialized Interest Groups (SIGs), the "scientific" approach to organize subject areas and specialization and standardization and harmonization! of means, nomenclatures, and modes of thinking. One of my favorite stories is "Longing for Unified Knowledge" where such a "specialist" runs into the founding session of the early general systems associations, mumbling "this is not my field" (as reported by Ivan M. Havel in our ISSS Wholeness Seminar).
As a starter I also recommend to check my MINDPRINT site, where we add the need for HANDPRINTS and MINDPRINTS, as FOOTPRINTS are good to visualize and communicate numbers, densities or consumption per area, but are not sufficient to negotiate and "harmonize" across domains and communicate gains in different cultures, technologies, times,... in short: incompatible but relevant information and our work on dialog, peace, policy-making, and multi-modal, faceted issues and consequences.
What am I? This is a "well-packed" question for which I have not the or a single answer. Some People called me an in-betweener, go-getter, facilitator, hub, marvel-hero, trim-tab, bricoleur, career designeer, ....
I have not single answer as I feel we Need to walk the talk and sing and dance Life !
To nebulous an answer? I am sorry but I do not go for overclaims and oversimplifications, under-complex and over-simplistic approaches with clan-think mindsets about real issues in clear contexts!